Streetalk: Are you ready for some football?

Kristen: I hate football with an intense passion because my father is obsessed with it. He always got so into it during holidays that he would scream and yell, and we would have to compete for attention. I played with Barbies. I remember my father and his brothers and how much they yelled. They were like zombies. When I hear the sounds of football today, I think of angry men yelling together. It makes my skin crawl. When I walk past a sports bar, I walk a little faster. For me, when someone scores a touchdown and everybody yells, it’s like PTSD when a bomb goes off and everybody ducks for cover.

Steve: A bunch of pussies. They’re fat guys wearing pads, on steroids. I’m a rugby player. Those guys wouldn’t last five minutes playing rugby. I don’t bait dogs. Football is very little technical ability, no thinking involved. Rugby doesn’t stop. You don’t have time outs, you don’t stop every five minutes and tell somebody, “I’ll be here throw me the ball.” I played American football in Scotland. Crap. It’s like playing cricket. I was a lineman. Most of the time I never touched the ball. It was like, “This is the stupidest fuckin’ game in the world.” When rugby players play against American football players, they kick their asses in both games.

Sean: I’m not like Mr. anti-American, but it just seems chauvinistic and very fake. Plus, it has nothing to do with your feet. It’s holding the football in your hands. I feel like handball is what football should be called. It just doesn’t make any sense. And everything is done on the old numeric system. Feet, yards — everybody else is using the metric system, like, for the past 100 years. It’s just so out of date. A bunch of B.S. pretty much.

(Photos by Jeff Slate)